Who

Xs and Os

Every year, like clockwork, the big gaming megacorps turn out this year’s
model of their (American) football games. A little more glitz, a little more
glamour, some new player statistics. Every year, like clockwork, the gaming
press issues their boring roundups of the subtle differences between the
nearly identical games. This one has better graphics, that one has a better
running game. The commentary on this one sounds more realistic, that one has
better stadiums.

I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do something a little different.

I’m going to compare the latest megacorp NFL Football game, EA Sports’ Madden
2005 to an older game: XOR’s NFL Challenge, a mixed text-and-graphics DOS-
based game first published in 1985. The thing about sports videogames that
both attracts and repels me is that I’m not good at any sport that doesn’t
involve a firearm. On the upside, sports games provide an outlet for me to
fantasize about a world where I possess some degree of athletic prowess. And
sport by its nature contains many dramatic moments that lend themselves well
to videogames. On the downside, I feel the residual guilt of willingly playing
a game where I am in some respects pretending to be one of the people I
loathed in high school.

You’d think that football, with its macho tradition and homoerotic undertones,
would be my least favorite videogame. In truth, it’s one of my favorites. This
is because football, more than other sports, is a tactical game. The tactical
aspect of football shines through in the videogame versions. All football
videogames, deep inside, are just immensely complex versions of rock-scissors-
paper. This isn’t as evident in other sports videogames. I “know” that on some
level there are formations in soccer, and plays. I “know” that I can tell my
basketball team to go full court press, or take a zone defense. But the
constant action in those games means that I, as a player, end up focusing more
on making whoever has the ball engage in some outrageous piece of on-field
bravado in order to score. In football often a play’s success depends more on
trying to trick the opponent’s defense into anticipating a run when I am
really going to pass than on raw playing talent.

In most videogame versions of football, it is considered legitimate to pick a
play, hike the ball, and then not touch the controller, but to just let the
players run the play as best they can. So most football games already allow
you to treat them as nearly pure coaching games.

NFL Challenge is a pure coaching game. The game has a statistical mode where
it simulates an entire season, but for this review I’m going to focus on the
“play one game” mode. If you like football as an abstract battle, NFL
Challenge might be the most fun you can have with your pants on.

You can have two human players, or one player can challenge the computer, or
you can let two computer players fight it out and you just watch. Assuming you
choose to control a team, the mechanisms are simple: choose a formation and a
play. Then, watch the play happen. There are more options than that, of course
– you can call time outs, substitute players, go to a “hurry up” offense –
but the core of the game is choose a play, watch the play.

The play calling interface is sparse but effective. You see an overhead view
of the field drawn in colored ASCII graphics. A red triangle indicates the
position of the ball on the field. Pop-up text menus let you choose a
formation by number. Once you choose a formation, you choose a play. The
perspective then transfers to the “run the play” view.

This is where the simplicitly of the game shines through. What you see is
nothing less than a colour version of the old Atari arcade football game: 11
Xs represent the defense, 11 Os represent the offense. The play commences, and
the Xs and Os begin their dance. There’s no control on this screen at all.
You’ve chosen your team, they have their preset skills, and they run the play
to the best of their ability. The game is simple. The game is elegant. The
game is addictive.

Madden 2005 stands up surprisingly well to NFL Challenge as a strategic
game. In addition to allowing you to play “hands off,” it has some features
that are of use to the football novice. The best of these is “Football 101”,
which allows you to explore different offensive formations and plays, with a
voiceover explaining the purpose of the formation and how the play is supposed
to work. Regrettably, I haven’t found a way to get Football 101 to explain
defensive formations and plays to me yet, but half a loaf is better than none.

As you’d expect, it is in the overall presentation of football as a beauty
pageant where Madden 2005 outshines its predecessor. The actual player
animations are underwhelming. If you’ve played any of the 2000-era games on
the Sega Dreamcast, then this is basically more of the same. Ball collision
detection is still loosey-goosey and feels unnatural and otherworldly. You
have complete control of your players, if you want it. If you’d rather not
play as a coach, you can control one player at a time with great precision,
making him juke, stiff-arm, dive, and run. Also, the spit and polish on the
other aspects of the presentation are notable.

For example, the first time you start the game, it asks you what your favorite
team is. From that point forward, all of the animations and background movies
in the menus are of your “favorite” team in action, and the color scheme is
coordinated to your team’s colours as well. When you start playing with the
“play now” option, you’re given an setup menu which by default has your
favorite team as the home team, with you controlling it. This is one of those
optimizations that seems so obvious after you actually see it in action that
you marvel that everyone hasn’t already done it.

The color commentary from John Madden and the other crew “in the booth” is
generally on-target and feels very natural. There are none of the
discontinuities and aberrations that plagued earlier games. Stadiums and teams
are all correctly depicted, and Electronic Arts gets a nice big plusplus for
remembering that the Pittsburgh Steelers don’t have cheerleaders. You can
create customized players, and even customized fans who show up in some
cutscenes. It’s cute.

Madden also provides a large number of play modes, including online support
(via Xbox Live on the Xbox version – welcome to the 21st Century,
EA). There’s also a
sort of strange “collectible card” thing going on. As you play the game,
complete training challenges, and meet certain goals (for example, “make 5
tackles with the same player”) you earn “tokens” which can then be used to buy
“packs” of Madden cards. The cards have various powers that can then be
deployed during the game, up to and even including cheatsing. I’m the sort of
obsessive-compulsive collector who should like this, but it doesn’t really
work. It muddies the focus of the game.

One specific area where Madden isn’t quite as enjoyable as NFL Challenge
is in substitutions, penalties, and injuries. In several weeks of Madden
games, I haven’t seen a single penalty. I haven’t seen a single injury. And
for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to get the game to stop undoing my
roster changes. I send Bettis out on the field, and three plays later Staley
is subbed in for him without the game even telling me. This drives me nuts.
The frequency of penalties and injuries in NFL Challenge feels about right
to me, and you have complete control over your roster.

Both of these games will be a pleasure for the “coach style” football addict.
If you’ve never played NFL Challenge I suggest you try it. I give it the
edge because it feels more like “actual football” than Madden. If you are
seduced by the glitz and presentation of Madden, well, you won’t be alone.
It’s a pretty game. But I think NFL Challenge is the deeper one.

Additional Resources

You can find NFL Challenge online. It plays well in DOSBox on the Windows and Mac platforms, and presumably anywhere else DOSBox runs.

Madden 2005 is available at your nearest megacorp game store, or from Amazon.com, for the PS2, Xbox, Gamecube and other platforms.